The Ice on the Lake

Messenger follows up his memoir The Twenty-Ninth Day with a ponderous novel about a Minnesota man contemplating his failures as he tries to survive a blizzard on Lake Superior. Hugh McLaren has been estranged from his children since his wife died in a car accident decades earlier and he shrunk at the prospect of being a single parent. A terminal cancer diagnosis—the same prognosis that killed Hugh’s emotionally neglectful father—spurs him to examine his regrets and embark on a solo ice fishing trip on Lake Superior. As Hugh dreams up ways to reconnect with his adult children, a blizzard lashes the lake, and the patch of ice he’s stationed on breaks away and becomes a floe. Though the setup has the trappings of a survival thriller, Messenger opts for something more spiritual, neglecting all but the most basic narrative intrigue while banking too hard that readers will invest in Hugh’s long-winded reckoning with his own mortality. A contrived third-act resolution doesn’t help. This is a letdown. Agent: Philip Turner, Philip Turner Book Productions. (Mar.)